.... you didn't hear it from me....  but I'm sure hundreds of others have already done the same and I'm not the first guy to do this........
          I've very recently gone back and resumbitted stuff from 4 or 5 months ago that was rejected for   "too many already" ,  "not looking for this kind of image"  or  "not microstock material"   ......... and they've been accepted.   Sometimes, it's the EXACT same shot,  sometimes, I've just flipped it horizontally.  And the crazy part, ... the pic sells within a couple days.
      I guess the outfits and their wares for sale go through evolutionary changes  or,  ......their staffs do.          try it, see if you get results. Be interesting to hear.

StockXpert reviewers seem to have a bulk reject option as well, just had a batch 22 backgrounds rejected (well 2 were accepted) for being too dark.

sorry, meant for this to show up in my comment above.

DT is medium volume for me... not bad, not great,... uploaded a dozen pix today and was told to expect over a 5 day wait for review.    -tom

I do not want to belabor this problem I experienced. I only come to it once more here,  so that there is no misunderstanding. It appears that there might be.
      I had a reoccuring  problem with FT. I want all to understand that Fotolia and Chad Bridwell personally DID respond,  and the credits were restored to my account. I do not have an issue with that. In fact, I appreciated the efforts of Mr. Bridwell. A man in his position, I'm sure,  has better things to do than deal with penny credits.
      I have no complaint in the response I received and the corrective action taken to restore the account.  For some reason, I had the problem 3 times in a relatively short period of time.  Since no others here seem to have experienced a similar problem, it can only appear that somehow, I caused it. How? I have no idea, I do nothing different on FT than I do on the other 8 sites I belong to.

      I appreciate Chad's offer very much, but considering my dissmal sales, and the aggravation of this reoccuring problem, it just didn't seem worth the hassle for me.... and I'm sure for FT. If I were to stay and the problems continue, it could only result in my own reputation and integrity being brought into question. I do not lie, I am not a scammer. Taking a chance on besmirching my name is certainly not worth 33 cents.  How would it appear if every few weeks, 3 or 4 pictures show as purchased by me and I continually denied purchasing them? It's only my word they have to go on. They show as purchased by me. How would it make me look?  Would any of you want to be in that position? Of course not. 
      Perhaps in the future I will attempt a relationship with FT.  Perhaps at some future time, the true "why of it" will be uncovered.  By all your comments, FT obviously has a good reputation and is a successful venture.  I bear them no ill will and I will not bad-mouth them on this or any other forum.  Clean break, shake hands, peace.

'Nuff said on that.  Let's move on to enjoying our work.


A point in general about microstock sites. I do not buy photos. If the whole 'credit to buy' system could be taken out of the equation, that'd be fine for me. I have no use for it. I don't need it. I wish I could click and turn off the option.
I understand that a great majority of other photographers are also designers and buyers. I understand the need to have it available, it's business. But I'm also sure I'm not the only guy on the planet that doesn't buy photos. I would suggest that it be made an optional feature in the future design of these sites. It can't be that hard to do.
      If Fotolia could somehow set it up that it were impossible for me to buy, I'd be delighted and  I'd go back today!!   

Phildate -  Point well taken.  I understand well that it takes time. I experienced that just about everywhere. SS was a perfect example, sales were low and few and then suddenly one day, they exploded and continue to do well.  And I've read all the positive experiences that many of the folks here, like yourself, have had at FT.
      And I would have stuck it out waiting my time at FT too. But this problem.... once, okay, stuff happens...  twice....  hey, what's up?  and then a third time...    you know what they say about 3 strikes.
     I don't know, maybe I was the glitch, maybe they've got a glitch.  I don't think it was me but, it kept happening just the same.

      I'm not going to bad-mouth FT. I have close, personal  friends doing well at FT.  For some reason, me and FT just didn't mesh. Fotolia seems to do very well for most of you folks.  And when I had a problem, Chad Bridwell of FT was a gentleman and helped me out.  It's just that at this point, no one knows why there was a problem.  And, it seems senseless to hang on  if the problem was going to keep coming on.
     I wish all of you continued success at FT and have no ill feelings toward Fotolia. I know they won't miss me.   It just didn't work out.

Hey, no problem Adelaide, I'm a jokester and I can sure take one too.         
      I really don't know why this is happening, but it's the 3rd time.  And I never got a straight answer as to what they ever found.
     Mr. Chad Bridwell of FT USA sent a mail saying something like he was aware of the problem... engineers would fix it. That is not intended to be a quote, was something to that effect, I should have saved the email. I did eventually get the sales removed.  And I appreciated it.
     Some here suggested that I was accidentally clicking on a buy button.  Yeah, that would be possible except for one thing. When my wife and I got into stock back in June,  we determined that we should NEVER surf the site while under our account,   to avoid that very thing. So when we do look around at the competition, it's from the outside off the web.   So that COULDN'T have happened, we couldn't 'accidentally' buy.
     Some one from FT tech suggested that I compromised my passname and code somewhere.  Well, that doesn't fly either. The site is only accessed by me or my wife from this computer sitting in my house. Neither of us surfs the internet on the job or outside the home.  Not likely that was the case.
     I think it was more what Mr. Bridwell alluded to. There's a glitch somewhere that related to my little chunk of bytes in whatever server handled my account.  But I'm not a programmer... 
      All I know is when I wait forever to sell 3 or 4 pix for 33 cents, and then suddenly I'm charged with buying 3 or 4 pix, or a $1 pic, what's the point?  It is a royal pain in the butt getting the problem fixed and it always came out like it was something I was doing wrong.
    Okay, I'm not perfect. I make mistakes.  However, I'm on 8 other sites and have NEVER had a problem on any of them. So, I kind of don't think it's me acting goofy.
       Yeah, I can take a joke, but the same joke over and over starts to wear thin. 
       I'm not going to go ballistic about it. I'm calm & cool. No Problemo.
    I'm simply bailing out.  I've already deleted all my picture and when I'm finished here, I'll be emailing FT to close my account. They can keep the 5 bucks or whatever.
      Truth be told, it won't be any great loss to me and I know I'll not be a loss to Fotolia.  I joined them back in August. I only had 54 pix there ( I would have had a few hundred, but everytime I had a problem, I'd stop uploading there, not trusting them)... and since August, I've only had 15 sales on 5 pictures.  Pretty lousy.. 
  Fact is, I have way more than 15 sales DAILY on SS.  Those exact same pix are selling well everywhere else, why not on FT? I don't know. Maybe it was because in all that time I'd only have 3 or 4 views on pix that have been there a couple/few months. ??
     The only other site I'm on with fewer sales than FT is USPS, a whopping $4.80.   Only pennies less than FT.
  [ And they're next.  The ONLY reason I haven't closed USPS yet is that I have way over a hundred pix there and I haven't had the time to waste deleting them one at a time. ]

    I'm doing just fine on all the others, except LO, but I'm hanging in there as I think they will do very well once they start rolling.
     I won't miss FT,  they won't miss me.  So everyone's happy.  At the rate it was going, my huge 15 sales would have been eaten up by bogus buys in a matter of weeks.  I don't know why it happened, but it did and it only did there.  Was it them, was it me? Doesn't matter now.
      Now it'll be someone elses problem with FT.

  Thanks for letting me vent.       peace-tom
     

Edit: I found that email

Hello Tom,
 I am aware of this problem and our engineers are fixing it. We will add the credits back to your account as needed.
                                   Chad Bridwell

Pixart-- if you browse thru the blog on LO, I'm pretty sure Bryan wrote about just that thing...  how the title is involved in a search,  the value of having words in the title and description as keywords and how the net associates to those words..  Worth the read.    peace-tom

thanks for the info, folks!!      peace - tom

...status quo... my rejection rate usually runs about   20% with SS. This weekend however,  I upoaded 65 pix, they rejected 9.  I was happy with that.  And for some unknown reason, my sales today and yesterday were higher than the last 2 weeks combined.  why, no clue.  but i'm not complaining.     

yeah......    this policy of Photographersdirect will surely put the microstock industry out of business.   yup,  gee  what am I going to do now? ....... [insert extreme sarcasm here]

As Leaf pointed out,  some of the Macros are taking pix from micro-folks.  Now,let's think about this.   If Photographersdirect's competition is taking the pix from microphotogs,  ....... who REALLY IS the one in danger of  'going out of business' ?    It ain't the micro's, baby. 

Many of us are like Adelaide as well.  My BEST work isn't on ANY microsite. I hope to soon be with a macro outfit and I can say this as well.  I have work that will never go on a macro either.  That work will go to something or someone special willing to PAY for it. Or not.   Maybe it will go nowhere except to my kids when I kick the bucket. The point is what it is worth to me.

My selling a picture of a 1950's transistor radio that took me all of 2 minutes to shoot, process and post....  for a buck on bigstock... doesn't make me  "a whore of photography".    The shot's only worth  50 cents.   I'd  feel more like a whore selling the stupid pic to some guy for $300.  Now THAT's whoring!  Let's be honest. It didn't take me $300 bucks worth of talent to shoot it. 
      Then, there are shots that I put my heart into.  Well,  they aren't on microsites.

I get so tired of that old  "micro photogs aren't professionals, only macro photogs are"  .... it's such a load of  horse-waste.  All you have to do is click on Getty, Corbis, Jupiter..... any of them and you can find a whole boatload of terribly, lousy photos!!   Photos that you know would not get past a reviewer at SS, LO or StockXpert or others.   On the other hand,  some of the best photography I've seen in my life  (58 years of it now),  I see on microsites!!   Far superior to some of the so-called,  ' macro professionals'.  And I stress  some!!  There are photogs on the macros that I will NEVER even COME CLOSE TO in artistic work! They are true artistic photographers. But just because you get picked up by Getty, doesn't give you talent and make you instantly.. a "professional".  Unless of course as, I think it was our own dbvirago once said,  you get your decoder ring and special handshake.

Only time will put that ridiculous debate to rest. And I think we all know how it is going to turn out. Who do you think will make the most money? The car dealer selling Rolls Royces for list price, 2, 4, 500 thousand or the dealer that's doing volume selling them a couple grand above cost. Where would you go buy the car?  It's pure economics,  those like Photographersdirect can stand on their precious principles all they want....  perhaps even  while hashing out their bankruptcy  terms. The photo world will be passing them by.  They don't want my pictures, Almay will take 'em.

and just for the record.  I'm happy with the buck for the picture.  If some dude really feels the need to pay $300 for it, he thinks it's worth it, that's okay too.   Hey,  'The customer is always right.".

StockXpert....  what a waste of my time tonight.   I haven't uploaded to StockXpert in some time and tonight I figured to put up about 50 images. At 20, I flipped over to the image page so that I could pick up the ID numbers attached to each pic and log them into the data base I use to track my sites.
    Low and behold, I find that the pix are being reviewed as I submit them, 16 are ALREADY DONE!!  However,  8 of the 16 are rejected.  {interestingly, ALL  the images that I was uploading are already on SS and most have already sold there and on DT, } ....  of course many were rejected for the  "not looking for such images".  Okay, that's fine, I can dig that, you know your buyers better than I do. 
    But a couple were rejected for  "photo too dark"  ?!?!?   Weren't too dark for  SS, DT, BigStock, LO and more....  where they're selling.  Okay, okay, that's fine, I'll accept that too.  You don't want them. No problemo.

However, this is the topper, this is the one that killed me.

     "Photo rejected - image is too blurry"   

Here's my problem one.    This photo,  I accidentally RE-LOADED tonight.  I had ALREADY  loaded it a month or so ago and it was ACCEPTED.   SO, tell me, how's that work?  It was a great photo last month, they took it.  Tonight it's too blurry.   Incidentally, this photo has detail at 200%.
   
I don't mind rejection.  I understand rejection.  I understand an outfit declining a shot, thinking they can't market it..... that's cool, that's fine.
     But, when you already have the shot and are selling it,  how did it suddenly become a lousy pic a month later?   How about some consistency in reviews?  Seems like too often it's not really if your shot is good or bad,  it's   ...which way is the wind blowing...

      Needless to say,  I stopped uploading the rest of the 50 shots. What a waste of time.    Okay, thanks for letting me rant.      peace-tom

My goodness.....   I sold a picture on USPS yesteday...

wow, that takes me up to  a grand total of    5 sales since  June 2006!!

I'm really excited now...  i should see my first check sometime in  August 2008!!